Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Newsletter submissions/Jinkies! It's another food review!
As the Guinness record holder for longest running cartoon comedy, Scooby-Doo has been constantly on the air in one form or another in multiple series since his debut over 40 years ago. But it seems the cowardly canine is now being bested by another group of meddling kids- at least on the supermarket shelves. Way back in issue 28, I reviewed two food products featuring Phineas and Ferb. Now I'm back with two more that I've recently spotted on store shelves...and interestingly, both of them seem to have replaced products in the same lines that previously featured the great Great Dane. One of the two products I reviewed in my last look at Phineas and Ferb-branded foodstuffs (alongside Kellogg's fruit-flavored snacks) was Breyer's yogurt. As of this April, Breyer's yogurt is no longer being manufactured, but Phineas and Ferb have recently made their way to another brand of yogurt, Go-Gurt, the portable yogurt tubes manufactured by Yoplait. I was able to find a stray box of Scooby-Doo Go-Gurt (or "Ro-Gurt," as it was called, playing on his legendary speech impediment) on the shelves next to it, and both have the exact same bar code number, which confirms that Phineas and Ferb are Scooby's Go-Gurt replacement. As I wrote in issue 28, it's hard to make yogurt look like Phineas and Ferb (or Scooby-Doo, for that matter), so the Phineas and Ferb elements here are mainly cosmetic ones, including the designs on the tubes, each of which features a Phineas and Ferb character along with a trivia question, and the flavor names, Perry Berry and Summer Punch (which when Scooby was featured were 'Rawberry and Shaggy's Cool Punch, respectively). The yogurt actually tastes pretty good- much better than the Breyer's yogurt did- with Perry Berry/'Rawberry being my favorite of the two flavors (though Summer/Shaggy's Cool Punch isn't that bad, either). Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is a long-standing food staple, especially in Canada, where it's sold under the name Kraft Dinner and is considered a stereotypical low-cost, easy-to-prepare food for college students and others with low budgets, similar to ramen noodles in the U.S. Regardless of whether you see this as a compliment or an insult to it, it's probably why the product has lasted for so long. Many famous characters have been honored as Kraft shapes over the years, and we first learned that Phineas and Ferb would be so honored in the New York Times about a year ago. My evidence of the boys replacing Scooby-Doo is not as concrete as it is for Go-Gurt, but since Cars recently replaced its Pixar brethren Toy Story and the Scooby-Doo macaroni is no longer available, it seems likely. Although Lightning McQueen (as well as SpongeBob) is available both in the traditional "blue box" and microwavable single-serve formats, Phineas and Ferb are only available in the "blue box." There are three different box designs- Phineas, Ferb, and Agent P- each of which has a different activity on the back. The macaroni itself has five different shapes: Phineas, Ferb, Candace, Isabella, and Perry. It's nice to see Candace and Isabella represented here, as they're two characters you don't see in merchandise very often due to the fact that Disney targets its Phineas and Ferb merchandise mainly towards young boys. I am by no means a chef, and feared that my attempts to cook the macaroni would end up as catastrophic as Candace and Stacy's foray into cooking. Thankfully, it didn't- or, if it did, at leas the end result ended up as surprisingly well as theirs did. Rather than using a stove, I cooked the pasta in a microwave using a clear tub used for microwaving pasta- it was interesting to see the pasta start to swim around in the tub once the water boiled. The end result was pretty good- not the best pasta I've ever tasted, but better than just plain pasta. For better or for worse, the stereotype is true- it's a satisfying, easy-to-prepare meal that fits the bill when you don't have time or money for something extravagant. Hopefully, Scooby-Doo isn't jealous of Phineas and Ferb for taking his place on these two food items. Given his appetite, perhaps he might even make his own "Scooby snack" out of them- and if he doesn't, he won't be disappointed, as these two are snacks I can recommend- especially the Go-Gurt. I'll be keeping my eye out to see if Phineas and Ferb show up on more food products in the future- and whether or not they take the place of other pop culture icons in the process.